Schirmer's family: Picture painted at his trial in Monroe County is not accurate

Sunday

Feb 17, 2013 at 12:01 AMFeb 18, 2013 at 12:27 PM

Stunned by his recent conviction for murder and what they say was an unfair characterization of him at his trial and on a true-crime television show, the family of Arthur Burton "A.B." Schirmer are speaking out in his defense for the first time.

By JOHN LATIMERLebanon Daily News

Stunned by his recent conviction for murder and what they say was an unfair characterization of him at his trial and on a true-crime television show, the family of Arthur Burton "A.B." Schirmer are speaking out in his defense for the first time.

Schirmer's daughters, Amy Wolfgang and Julie Campbell; their respective husbands, Charlton Wolfgang and Craig Campbell; his younger brother, Lawrence Schirmer; and A.B. Schirmer's fiancée, Cindy Moyer, want the public to know that the former pastor of Lebanon's Bethany United Methodist Church and one-time minister at Reeders United Methodist Church in Monroe County is not the sociopathic monster that he is portrayed to be.

Instead of the emotionless, calculating person prosecutors presented at his recent trial in Monroe County, they said Schirmer, 64, is a loving grandfather, a compassionate father and a doting husband.

In the company of Schirmer's attorney, Brandon Reish, those who say they know Schirmer best and who are convinced of his innocence gathered recently in North Cornwall Township to express the pent-up feelings they've held since he became the target of investigations into the deaths of his second wife, Betty, in 2008 and first wife, Jewel, in 1999.

"Everyone sitting in this room, if I can speak for them, believes that he is 100 percent innocent of the charges that have been filed against him," said Moyer, who became engaged to Schirmer in 2010. "I just want people to know that."

One member of the immediate family, Schirmer's 38-year-old son, Micah, who lives in San Diego, was not present.

But his sisters said he supports their father and believes in his innocence.

In January, all of the siblings attended their father's trial in Monroe County.

The jury didn't see it the same way they did and convicted Schirmer, who will be sentenced in March.

The prosecution successfully convinced the jury that Schirmer beat Betty to the point of unconsciousness at their home and then staged a late-night car crash to explain her injuries, from which she died at the age of 56 on the following day.

The jury spent less than 90 minutes deliberating before returning a guilty verdict.

It was so quick that, when jury members returned to the courtroom, the family thought maybe they simply had a question about the evidence.

"It was surreal, horrific," Julie Campbell recalled. "When we knew they were coming back so quick, we all looked at each other with fear. "» Then when we saw Brandon, and he said a verdict. And we were like, really? It was shocking, disappointing."

Five days later, their emotions still raw, Amy Wolfgang and Julie Campbell were interviewed together by NBC Dateline's Dennis Murphy.

Lawrence Schirmer said he declined a request to be interviewed and, on Reish's advice, Moyer was not interviewed.

Parts of their interview were woven into a two-hour episode titled "Fallen" that aired Feb. 8, which also included interviews with members of Betty's family, Moyer's daughter, Schirmer's friend and former Lebanon Councilman Darryl Cox, investigators and a forensic pathologist who testified for the prosecution.

The show distorted some facts and misrepresented others, Reish said.

Among them, he said, was the suggestion that Schirmer tried to run from police when he was arrested at Moyer's house in summer 2010. Schirmer was dressed in running clothes and preparing to take a jog when they arrived unannounced, the attorney said.

"That was actually taken way out of context on 'Dateline'," Reish said. "He was literally going for a jog. And at the point in time when they arrested him, we knew he was under investigation. He hadn't gone anywhere. He had been investigated for a lengthy period of time. They knew where I was. They knew where he was. All they had to do was pick up a phone, and we would have surrendered him."

On balance, Reish said, the "Dateline" show was fair in that it gave both the prosecution's and defense's side of the story.

"Watching it as it was being played, there were points every few minutes where I could have addressed an issue," he said. "But at least at the end they left the big questions open, which were: Was the trial fair and will there be an appeal?"

The answer to the latter question, Reish said, is yes.

An appeal will be filed on the grounds that evidence from the death of Schirmer's first wife should not have been allowed in the first trial.

Jewel Schirmer died at the age of 50 of traumatic brain injuries similar to those suffered by Betty Schirmer.

Schirmer found Jewel, bleeding and unconscious, at the bottom of the basement steps in the couple's North Lebanon Township home.

Schirmer claimed she fell while he was out jogging as she vacuumed the basement steps and her feet became entangled in the cord, which was found wrapped around her ankle when medics arrived.

She died a day later.

At the time, the cause of her death was ruled undetermined. It has since been ruled a homicide. Homicide charges in Jewel's death were only filed against Schirmer last year, the result of a reinvestigation spurred by the case in Monroe County.

The Monroe charges were filed more than two years after Betty's death, which also was ruled accidental at first.

But the suicide of Joseph Musante in Schirmer's church office, four month's after Betty's death, brought to light an affair that Schirmer was having with Musante's wife, Moyer, who worked as his assistant at Reeders United Methodist Church.

When Monroe County investigators coupled the affair with the circumstances of Betty's death, and the fact that Jewel also died from head injuries while married to Schirmer, they began an investigation.

Lebanon County's investigation soon followed, and Schirmer pleaded innocent Wednesday when he was arraigned on homicide charges in Jewel's death.

A trial date has not been set.

When that trial comes, Schirmer's family said, they hope it does not unfold in the same manner as the Monroe County case — where their attempts to portray Schirmer as a dedicated and caring pastor and father were unsuccessful.

Reish claimed prosecutors had a weak forensic case, so they played on the emotions of the jury by attacking Schirmer's character.

Referring to him repeatedly as the "sinister minister," he said, they presented evidence of Schirmer's history of affairs with women and a stream of witnesses who said he showed little emotion as Betty lay dying at Lehigh Valley Hospital and later at her funeral.

"One of the theories of the commonwealth's case is that he was a bad person that didn't feel things," Reish said. "That is not so. And the family knows him in a different way. "» What we were trying to do was get the jury to focus on what actually mattered in the case. And they didn't. "» If you take somebody else who wasn't a minister and put them in the same set of facts, do you get the same result?"

Other damning evidence revealed at the trial, gathered from Schirmer's computer, was that he frequented multiple pornographic websites, Reish conceded.

What they didn't find on the computer was evidence to support murder charges, he said.

"You know, it is just amazing," Reish said. "They turned his life upside down, and what they found was that he had affairs and he looked at porn. If he would have done anything, and you turned his life upside down and shaken it, there should have been a lot more there. And there wasn't."

A call to Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Michael Mancuso, the lead prosecutor, was not returned.

They recall a joyful, supportive childhood in which they performed in their parents' music ministry.

Their parents were happily married, they said, and there was never a sign of violence in their relationship.

Both were grown and living outside the home, as was their brother, when their mother died in 1999.

Schirmer's daughters said they only recently became aware of their father's adulterous past as a result of the charges against him.

They are disappointed in him, they said, but it has not shaken their faith in his innocence.

"Having an affair does not make you a murderer," said Wolfgang, a kindergarten teacher.

Schirmer's brother, Lawrence, 62, agrees.

"It's two different things sitting there (at the trial) and finding out about affairs and other questionable acts, and murder. It is two different things," he said. "I'd be shocked to find that he murdered them, which I know he didn't. But him having an extramarital affair, you can't equate the two. They are not the same."

Campbell said she would like to talk to her father about his philandering, but it is not a concern now.

"He is in prison, and this is not the time or place because he has been found guilty of something that he didn't do," she said. "It doesn't matter how I feel about that at this point."

Campbell said she was angered that the feelings she and her family had for Betty were misrepresented at trial.

Both daughters said they were overjoyed for their father when he met Betty and later married her in 2001, saying it brought him out of a year-long depression after their mother's death.

"They treated it as if we weren't close to (Betty) and that we didn't care about her and love her," Campbell said. "And that is the farthest thing from the truth."

Betty was a grandmother to her three young daughters, and her death and the charges against their grandfather have been difficult on them, Campbell said.

Her 11-year-old daughter has not cut her hair since Schirmer was incarcerated 29 months ago and vows not to until he is released, she added.

The sisters also have an answer for those who feel they are betraying their mother by supporting their father.

"I would say, my mom would fight for my dad," Wolfgang said. "If someone is going to falsely accuse him of something — he did not do anything to my mother. He didn't."

Campbell agreed.

"If we thought, for a second, that our dad killed our mother, we wouldn't be supporting him," she said. "But we know he did not hurt her. It is not the way they presented it. We are honoring our mother."

The family speaks with Schirmer on the phone frequently, and Moyer said she drives to Monroe County Prison to visit him for 30 minutes each week.

He is holding up the best he can, she explained.

"He says he is an innocent man who will fight until his last breath," she said.

Not everyone in Schirmer's family circle is convinced of his innocence.

Since her death, Jonathan Behney, Jewel's brother, has believed he killed his sister.

Behney testified to that effect in Monroe County but declined to be interviewed for the "Dateline" episode because he expects to be called to testify when Schirmer is tried in Lebanon County.

For the same reason, Behney was reluctant to go into detail about his thoughts in the case.

But he said anyone who still believes in Schirmer's innocence after seeing the facts is in denial.

"The rest of them (the family) are out to lunch," he said. "The evidence was there at the trial, and the evidence was in the 'Dateline' show. The only way you would think that guy is innocent is if your head is in the sand."

While he disagrees with others in his extended family and is now estranged from them, Behney said, he shares their grief and was not overjoyed when Schirmer was found guilty.